The Council for Public Health and Society (RVS) warns in a new advice with the title On the brakes That our society has become a “hypernerveuze” “in which performance pressure, acceleration and gone through individualism seriously threaten the well -being of young and old.”
The mental health of the Dutch is under heavy pressure, warns the stainless steel under the chairmanship of former PvdA minister Jet Bussemaker. “Former Prime Minister Lubbers’ the Netherlands is sick once said. That struck the nearly 900,000 disabled people who knew the Netherlands around 1990 and were sick at home,” she writes in her preface. “Nowadays, almost half of the population ever has to deal with mental problems and 100,000 waiting places are filled for mental health care. […] If the Netherlands was sick in 1990, we would now be near the end. “
Mental health
“More and more young people are struggling with performance pressure, workers fall out with burnout complaints and almost half of the adults have once had a mental illness,” says the advice. The social costs of these psychological problems are estimated at least 18 billion euros per year. The “hypernervous society” requires “a different perspective.” The stainless steel is therefore based on “mental public health: a collective approach that looks at how we can keep people mentally healthy.”
The RVS argues for “socio-cultural change that is needed for
A more relaxed society ”. The Dutch can, for example, contribute to that by making room for ’empty time’ at school, at work and in leisure time, in order to make creativity, reflection and real contact possible. According to the Council, existing standards on productivity and success must be questioned for this.
The government must make an explicit policy to guarantee mental public health, the council believes. That is why one advice is to explicitly include that mental public health in the Public Health Care Act (WPG). “On the basis of the WPG, municipalities have the task of protecting and promoting public health.” The stainless steel finds that formulation too general. “It would help to [mentale volksgezondheid] to make this legal description explicit. “
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